Chicks hatching several days early?!

HomeGardenGirl

Songster
Feb 12, 2018
131
94
126
Hagerstown MD 21742
Our broody hen's clutch is due to hatch Saturday...today is Wednesday and there are two hatched already! One was dead sadly but the other seems fine from what we could tell without disturbing too much and several other eggs are also pipping and beginning to unzip! Is hatching on day 18 common? Last time this hen hatched a clutch they hatched on day 20.
 
First, a question. How are you counting the days? An egg does not have a day's worth of development 2 minutes after you put it under a broody hen or in an incubator. It takes 24 hours for the egg to have a day's worth of development. So when you count the days you need to say "one" 24 hours after you start the eggs. That's a real common mistake. One way to check yourself is that the day of the week you start them is the day of the week the 21 days is up. If you start them on Saturday, the 21 days are up on a Saturday.

I hatch with broody hens and with an incubator. With both, hatches are often start two full days early. That's after I've tweaked my incubator and got the temperature right. I thought it was me not calibrating the thermometer right but nope, I get the same results from a broody hen. Some hatches, broody or incubator, are over within 24 hours of the first one hatching, some broody's start hatching on Day 19 an have them off the nest Day 20. Some hatches drag out for over two days. And I have some that don't start until pretty close to the 21 days, but I've never had one, broody or incubator, start late. That's about the only way they are consistent. Others say their eggs are consistently a bit late.

There are different things that can cause the eggs to hatch early or late. Heredity, humidity, how and how long the eggs were stored, or just differences between the eggs. The big determining factor is average incubating temperature, if it is a bit warm they can be early, cool and they can be late. You can tweak an incubator temperature but how do you tweak a broody hen?

So to your question. Is them starting to hatch three full 24-hour days early under a broody hen common? Not in my experience, that's too early. But is starting to hatch two full 24-hour days early common? With my broodies and eggs, yep about half the time if not more.
 

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